Developments in society have brought about changes in shopping patterns. Shopping for groceries in a leisurely fashion has become a thing of the past. Today families do the bulk of their shopping on a weekly, bi-weekly, or even on a monthly basis and only make supplementary purchases on an as-needed basis. Supermarkets have grown larger, and the increase in their size has made shopping less convenient. This is particularly true for aged and infirm shoppers and as is well-known, the aged is one of the fastest growing demographic groups in many areas of the world.
Differently shaped and configured shopping or grocery carts are known. Such carts are typically offered to the customer by stores to make shopping easier and more convenient. Carts have significantly increased in size over the years. Such larger carts are typically unduly heavy, and may be unstable and unwieldy when loaded, rendering them difficult to push and, at best, clumsy to maneuver.
This problem is aggravated since conventional shopping carts typically use swiveling casters as wheels particularly on the front end of the cart and fixed wheels on the rear end of the cart. This often makes lateral movement of the cart difficult. This feature of many shopping carts is especially burdensome for aged and infirm shoppers. Additionally, basket capacity is much larger than needed for aged shoppers who, on average, have much smaller family sizes. These disadvantages discourage the supplemental shopper from using conventional, large carts, causing some shoppers to elect to hand carry their purchases or use hand baskets. This is usually a much less desirable option for weak or infirm senior citizens and effectively reduces store sales and profits. Moreover it may lead to injuries.
Accordingly, a need exists to ease the use of shopping carts, thereby helping to solve the above problems.